ORIGINAL RESEARCHpublished: 28 October 2015

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01646

Edited by:Elvira Brattico,

Aarhus University, Finland

Reviewed by:Diana Omigie,

Goldsmiths, University of London, UKMats B. Küssner,

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,Germany

*Correspondence:Alice M. Proverbio

mado.proverbio@unimib.it

Specialty section:This article was submitted to

Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience,a section of the journalFrontiers in Psychology

Received: 15 July 2015Accepted: 12 October 2015Published: 28 October 2015

Citation:Proverbio AM, Manfrin L, Arcari LA,

De Benedetto F, Gazzola M,Guardamagna M, Lozano Nasi V

and Zani A (2015) Non-expertlisteners show decreased heart rateand increased blood pressure (fearbradycardia) in response to atonal

music. Front. Psychol. 6:1646.doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01646

Non-expert listeners showdecreased heart rate and increasedblood pressure (fear bradycardia) inresponse to atonal musicAlice M. Proverbio1*, Luigi Manfrin2, Laura A. Arcari1, Francesco De Benedetto1,Martina Gazzola1, Matteo Guardamagna1, Valentina Lozano Nasi1 and Alberto Zani3

1 Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy, 2 Conservatory of Music “Lucio Campiani”, Mantova,Italy, 3 Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology – National Research Council, Milan, Italy

Previous studies suggested that listening to different types of music may modulatedifferently psychological mood and physiological responses associated with the inducedemotions. In this study the effect of listening to instrumental classical vs. atonalcontemporary music was examined in a group of 50 non-expert listeners. The subjects’heart rate and diastolic and systolic blood pressure values were measured while theylistened to music of different style and emotional typologies. Pieces were selected byasking a group of composers and conservatory professors to suggest a list of the mostemotional music pieces (from Renaissance to present time). A total of 214 suggestionsfrom 20 respondents were received. Then it was asked them to identify which piecesbest induced in the listener feelings of agitation, joy or pathos and the numberof suggested pieces per style was computed. Atonal pieces were more frequentlyindicated as agitating, and tonal pieces as joyful. The presence/absence of tonality in amusical piece did not affect the affective dimension of pathos (being touching). Amongthe most frequently cited six pieces were selected that were comparable for structureand style, to represent each emotion and style. They were equally evaluated as unfamiliarby an independent group of 10 students of the same cohort) and were then used asstimuli for the experimental session in which autonomic parameters were recorded.Overall, listening to atonal music (independent of the pieces’ emotional characteristics)was associated with a reduced heart rate (fear bradycardia) and increased bloodpressure (both diastolic and systolic), possibly reflecting an increase in alertness andattention, psychological tension, and anxiety. This evidence fits with the results of theesthetical assessment showing how, overall, atonal music is perceived as more agitatingand less joyful than tonal one.

Keywords: neuroesthetics, music perception, heart rate, dissonance, auditory processing, emotions, empiricalmusicology, psychophysiology

INTRODUCTION

The aim of the study was to investigate the possible effects of atonality music andemotional characterization on autonomic responses. While many studies have explored theneural mechanisms of music perception by measuring electrophysiological, neuroimaging, orphysiological parameters during music listening (Koelsch, 2014), so far little attention has been

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FIGURE 1 | Esthetic assessment of tonal artworks with respect to the three emotional categories (according to the evaluations of 20 conductors,composers, and conservatory professors). As in Kallinen (2005) emotional categorization showed a marked inter-individual variability. However, (unlike in theabove study, in which there were only a few pieces that were mentioned more than once or twice to illustrate a given emotion), many pieces were categorized in anextremely coherent manner.

paid to the effect of musical style, particularly the presence orabsence of tonality, on the esthetic experience. For example, somestudies defined contemporary atonal music as “adiabatic”; that is,incapable of transmitting emotions (Frova, 2008). Other scholarshave defined it as “entropic” (random, disordered, information-less; see Donin and Feneyrou, 2013), but few studies have beencarried out in the field of neuroscience.

Generally speaking, from a perceptual point of view twomain differences exist between tonal and atonal music. (1) Thepresence of a clear and predictive harmonic structure in theformer, and (2) the presence of acoustic dissonances in the latter.Overall, tonal pieces are perceived as more congruent and lessunexpected than atonal pieces, which violate consonance rulesand general music expectations about structure and harmony(e.g., Meyer, 1956; Pearce and Wiggins, 2012). Indeed, it ismore difficult to identify the musical structure of atonal pieces,especially for non-expert listeners (Daynes, 2011), and this mayreduce music appreciation. On the other hand, experiencedlisteners attending to serial music may indeed be able to detectcertain aspects of its artificial compositional grammar (e.g.,the eschewal of pitch repetition), or other types of structures

(Ockelford and Sergeant, 2012) not necessarily designed bythe composer. This greater understanding is associated witha greater esthetic appreciation. Violations and confirmationsof musically induced expectations may be able to affectrelated psychophysiological activations. In an interesting studyEgermann et al. (2013) found a general increase of physiologicalarousal to unexpected musical events or endings (e.g., note’spitch) in terms of heart rate and facial expressivity, thus showinghow music structure per se can heavily affect induced feelings,regardless of music emotional characterization.

Tonal and atonal music also differ considerably from theperceptual point of view, because the latter is full of dissonancesand inharmonic chords. It was shown that the perceptionof inharmonic isolated sounds or chords elicit physiologicallydifferent responses in newborns (Perani et al., 2010; Virtalaet al., 2012) and human adults (Bidelman and Krishnan,2009; Bidelman and Heinz, 2011), as well as in other species,such as macaques (Macaca fascicularis, Fishman et al., 2001),chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, Sugimoto et al., 2010) and rats(Rattus norvegicus, Crespo-Bojorque and Toro, 2015). Althoughthere is some evidence that listening to tonal or atonal music

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FIGURE 2 | Esthetic assessment of atonal artworks with respect to the three emotional categories (according to the evaluations of 20 conductors,composers, and conservatory professors).

partially activates different brain regions (Minati et al., 2009), theneurophysiological correlates of perceiving atonal music remaina rather unexplored matter.

Zentner et al. (2008) analyzed participants’ reports of feltemotions in response to music listening. The factorial analysisrevealed nine esthetic dimensions: wonder, transcendence,nostalgia, tenderness, peacefulness, joyful activation, tension,sadness, and power. It is very likely that many felt emotionsshared some of their psychophysiological and neurophysiologicalsubstrate. And indeed, Vuilleumier and Trost (2015) showedthat complex music-induced feelings (such as wonder, nostalgia,or tenderness) shared common neural substrates. Feelings ofpower (i.e., being heroic and triumphant) were correlated withthe activation of the ventral striatum, similar to the effect of joybut with distinctive increases in the motor cortex and dorsalbasal ganglia. On the other hand, wonder (i.e., feeling alluredand amazed) also activated the ventral striatum, but unlike joyand power, it activated the motor areas to a lesser degree and theright hippocampus to a greater degree. Nostalgia and tenderness

were found to activate the hippocampus, and nostalgia producedincreased activity in the brain regions involved in visual imagery.Overall, the available literature suggests that the stimulation offeelings by music might solicit complex but shared associationsbased on partially overlapping neural mechanisms (Peretz andZatorre, 2003; Brattico and Pearce, 2013). On the other hand,joy, fear and sadness, among the emotions more commonlystudied in research on music and emotion (Zhao and Chen,2009; Huron, 2013; Kawakami et al., 2013; Liégeois-Chauvel et al.,2014; Hopyan et al., 2015) are pretty distinctive in terms of theirbiological substrates.

In this study, to possibly detect some changes in autonomicparameters during music listening, only music-induced affectivecategories that were quite distinctive in terms of their biologicalsubstrates were considered, namely: joy, pathos, and agitation.These categories are based on a rough subdivision in: (i) positivemood (joy, well-being, good mood, satisfaction, pleasure),associated with a cholinergic autonomic response, and, neurallywith the activation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and striate

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FIGURE 3 | Results of the paired-samples Wilcoxon rank-sum testapplied to the percentage of agitating vs. joyful evaluations attributedto pieces belonging to the two repertoires. Atonal pieces were judged tobe significantly more agitating (i.e., as inducing tension) than tonal pieces,which were more frequently labeled as joyful. No difference whatsoever wasfound in the frequency with which a piece was judged to be touching (i.e.,able to induce pathos) across the two repertoires. This finding is in contrastwith the conclusions advanced by Kallinen (2005) that: (i) modern music doesnot intend to portray emotions; (ii) the meaning of musical emotional qualitiesin modern music is not as well-established as it is with regard to older music.

cortex, the dopaminergic reward circuitry, the orbitofrontalcortex, nucleus accumbens (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Koelschet al., 2006); (ii) pathos (sadness, pain, commotion, nostalgia,tenderness, sympathy), associated with the activation of theinsula, cingulate cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, andhippocampus, along with high prolactin concentrations (Janata,2009; Trost et al., 2012; Huron, 2013); and (iii) agitation (surprise,fear, tension, excitement, anxiety), associated with an adrenergicsympathetic autonomic response, and the activation of theamygdala, motor cortex, cerebellum, etc. (Koelsch et al., 2006;Gosselin et al., 2007; Brattico and Pearce, 2013; Stupacher et al.,2013).

As for the effects of music-induced feelings on the autonomicnervous system (ANS) the available psychophysiology literatureis rather inconsistent (Krabs et al., 2015). For example, somestudies demonstrated an increase in heart rate with arousingmusic and a decrease with tranquilizing music (e.g., Bernardiet al., 2006), and others reported increases in heart rate witharousing as well as tranquilizing music (e.g., Iwanaga et al.,

2005). Thus, one intervening factor might be the music-evokedemotional valence. Several studies reported that compared tonegative valence (displeasure), positive valence (pleasure) isassociated with higher heart rate (e.g., Sammler et al., 2007).However, other studies (e.g., Etzel et al., 2006) failed to find effectsof music-evoked emotional valence on heart rate. Again, it hasbeen shown that listening to music can reduce pain intensityand systolic blood pressure in patients during post-operativerecovery (Chen et al., 2015). Furthermore, it can reduce stresslevels and heart rate in patients with coronary heart diseaseand cancer (Tan et al., 2015), but no reductions in heart rateor blood pressure in healthy controls were caused by listeningto music. In another study by Radstaak et al. (2014), it wasshown that although listening to both relaxing and happy musicimproved subjects’ moods, it did not diminish systolic bloodpressure. In another psychophysiological study by Tan et al.(2014), the effect of relaxing music on the recovery of heartrate after exercise was investigated. Twenty-three healthy youngvolunteers exercised on a treadmill and were then assessedfor heart rate recovery and subjected to saliva analysis. Theparticipants were either exposed to sedating music or to silenceduring the recovery period immediately following the treadmillexercise. No differences were found between exposure to musicor silence with respect to heart rate recovery, resting pulse rate, orsalivary cortisol, but again, no effect of tonal music was explored.It should be considered that in all studies taken into accountthe music listened to was relaxing, sedating or tranquilizing innature, therefore one might expect to find cholinergic responsesassociated with listening to this sort of music. On the otherhand, a parasympathetic defensive reaction such as the socalled fear-induced “bradycardia” (Hermans et al., 2013) hasnot been reported, so far, as a result of listening to classicalmusic. It is commonly produced by the abrupt presentation ofintense, noxious or scary sounds, both in animals (Young andLeaton, 1994; Kalin et al., 1996) and in humans (e.g., Anderssenet al., 1993). A fear bradycardia has also been observed duringperception of scary or violent movie scenes (Palomba et al.,2000).

The effect of atonality on autonomic parameters has beenrarely investigated, except for a study in which the respiratorysinus arrhythmia was measured in 40 mothers and their infantswhile listening to tonal and atonal music (Van Puyvelde et al.,2014). The authors found no effect of atonal music in mothersbut only in infants. Again, Krabs et al. (2015) compared listeningto pleasant tonal and unpleasant dissonant music with silence,and found an increase in heart rate during music listening vs.silence but no effect of music pleasantness (and dissonance) onthe cardiac response.

In our study, to select tonal or atonal pieces characterizedby a given emotional connotation, a group of musicianswas asked to indicate some representative pieces that bestexpressed a given emotion: the number of suggested piecesper emotion and musical style was calculated. The professionalsuggestions that overlapped more coherently were selected forthe experiment. The physiological responses of large group ofnon-musicians with no education and little interest in musicwere measured while they listened to music excerpts of various

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TABLE 1 | List of musical pieces selected more frequently and coherently by judges to represent each stylistic and affective category.

Composer Title Year Score

Atonal joyful

Hindemith, Paul First Movement of I Kammermusik (the fragment was taken from the opening passage) 1922 3

Cage, John Fontana Mix, for magnetic tape 1958 2

Maderna, Bruno Serenade for a satellite 1969 2

Castiglioni, Niccolò Inverno in-ver 1973 2

Atonal touching

Berg, Alban Eia Popeia, Lullaby from the first act of Wozzeck 1922 4

Pärt, Arvo Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten (the opening passage, after the first 15 s) 1977 3

Ives, Charles The Unanswered question 1906 3

Berg, Alban Last orchestra interlude from the last scene of Wozzeck 1922 3

Ligeti, György Concert for cello and orchestra 1966 3

Kurtag, Gyorgy Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova, Op. 17, 3rd part 1980 3

Atonal agitating

Schönberg, Arnold Erwartung, Op. 17 1909 5

Donatoni, Franco Duo Pour Bruno (ninth panel, from 14′ 37′ ′) 1975 3

Petrassi, Goffredo (Chorus of the Dead) Coro di morti 1941 3

Boulez, Pierre Second piano sonata 1948 3

Kurtag, Gyorgy String Quartet No. 1 1959 3

Tonal joyful

Beethoven, Ludwig Fourth Movement of Symphony No. 5 in C major (op. 67) (last minute of The coda: Allegro) 1808 6

Haendel, George Friedric Messiah HWV 56, part 2: Hallelujah in D major 1742 6

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus The Marriage of Figaro – Overture in D major (K492) 1786 6

Mendelssohn, Bartholdy Felix First Movement of Symphony No.4 “Italian” in A major (op.90) 1834 4

Liszt, Franz Hungarian Rhapsody No.2, S.244/2 in C-sharp major 1847 4

Tonal touching

Mahler, Gustav Symphony no. 5 in F major (Adagietto) 1902 6

Brahms, Johannes Intermezzo for piano in B flat minor (Op. 117) 1892 5

Ravel, Maurice Second movement of concert in G major 1931 5

Bach, Johann Sebastian Second Movement of Concert for two Violins in D minor (BWV 1043) (from measure 10) 1723 4

Bach, Johann Sebastian First part of Matthäus Passion in E minor (BWV 244) 1727 4

Mahler, Gustav Der Abschied from “The Song of the Earth” in C-minor 1909 4

Tonal agitating

Holst, Gustave The Planets: Mars, the bringer of war in C minor (op. 32) 1916 4

Gesualdo da Venosa, Carlo Tribulationem et dolorem. Sacrarum cantionum liber primus, in A minor (S1.4) 1603 3

Bach, Johann Sebastian ST. John Passion in G minor (BWV 245) (the opening passage) 1724 3

Beethoven, Ludwig van Piano sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, First Movement. (op.27, No.2) 1801 3

Beethoven, Ludwig van Symphony No. 5, First Movement in C minor (op. 67) 1808 3

Pieces with the same score are chronologically ordered. In bold are the selected pieces, and in parentheses is indicated which 1 min excerpt was taken.

styles (specifically comparing tonal vs. atonal music). In fact,one of the main problems with this type of investigation is thatesthetic preferences are strongly mediated by music exposureand education. We assumed that because our participantswere not educated and not particularly interested in classicalmusic, they would have been casually exposed to tonal andatonal music through random listening in public places, wheremusic is often played to create an atmosphere or reducestress. Indeed, in everyday life, we happen to involuntarily(and forcedly) listen to many different types of backgroundmusic (from pop to jazz, techno to classical) while watchingtelevision commercials, waiting on hold on the phone, or whenwe enter a bar, a restaurant, an airport, or a mall. Manytelevision programs and movies are associated with an atonal

soundtrack (especially dramas, horror movies, and thrillers, orwhen shocking revelations are to be expressed). Therefore, inthis study, the effect of “exposure to music” was not completelyannulled because participants (university students living in theMilan metropolitan area) belonged to a specific Western society.However, it should be known that the study’s aim was notto establish to what extent the esthetic appreciation dependedon evolutionary, anatomical or physiological constraints orwhether it was influenced by cultural, historical, and individualdifferences (Konecni, 1979; Jacobsen, 2010). To follow anecological approach, we chose to make the participants listento real tonal or atonal artworks and masterpieces, instead ofpresenting them simple melodies, chords, or fragments of littleartistic value (see Van Puyvelde et al., 2014; Krabs et al., 2015).

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FIGURE 4 | Mean values of heart rate (BPM), along with standarderrors, recorded while participants listened to atonal vs. tonal musicpieces.

ESTHETIC EVALUATION

JudgesA paper questionnaire was given to teachers in the localconservatory of music and an email questionnaire was sent toabout 50 music professionals whose email addresses were foundin the homepages of CIDIM (database of Italian musicians)and Italian music conservatories. Twenty musicians respondedenthusiastically and were recruited for the study. They were 20professional conductors, composers and professors of variousItalian conservatories whose mean age varied between 50and 60 years. The prestigious and excellent careers of alljudges included intensive teaching, national and internationalperformances in famous theaters, CD recordings, live televisionrecordings, masterclasses, and award.

Stimuli and ProcedureThe judges were asked to freely provide a list (between 5 and15) of the most emotional classic instrumental music piecesfrom the tonal and atonal repertoire. Instructions were: “Pleasekindly indicate in the relative boxes the musical pieces that, basedon your personal experience, are emblematic of three affectivecategories: agitating, happy, or touching music.”

Agitating was defined as music that transmitted anxiety,distress, fear, agitation, and tension.

Happy was defined as music that transmitted a good mood,wellness, joy, and happiness.

Touching was defined as music that transmitted pathos, grief,melancholy, pain, sadness, nostalgia, and sympathy.

Tonal music was defined as any musical production thathad a tonal center around which the melody and harmonywere based, including the monodic productions of the MiddleAges.

Atonalmusic was defined as any musical production (roughlydated after 1910: from Schönberg onward) that avoided a tonalcenter or used multiple tonal centers simultaneously. After theirinitial selection, movie soundtracks, opera pieces and excessivelypopular pieces were discarded.

A total of 207 suggestion was received: 147 tonal piecesand 60 atonal pieces. Similarly to Kallinen (2005), who askedcomposers and Conservatory teachers to nominate musicalworks that expressed specific emotions, we found that a higherproportion of tonal works were selected than non-tonal works.As expected, the music professionals suggested more musicbased on the diatonic major/minor than the amodal/atonalor dodecaphonic system (i.e., Renaissance, 21th-century).Thecorpus of suggestions was re-submitted to judges, asking themto identify the most touching, joyful, or agitating pieces amongthe ones listed (if any, and according to their esthetic preference).Unlike in Kallinen (2005) study, in which suggestions for typicalbasic emotional music excerpts overlapped minimally (i.e., therewere only a few pieces that were mentioned more than once ortwice), many pieces received a coherent categorization from thejudges, in our study.

Data AnalysisOverall, the 20 judges provided 123 esthetic evaluations (aboutsix pieces per judge) for the 60 atonal pieces and 319 evaluations(about 16 pieces per judge) for the 147 tonal pieces (Figures 1and 2). The number of suggested pieces per emotion and musicalstyle was calculated and descriptive statistical methods andWilcoxon testing were used to analyze the data. The evaluationswere attributed as follows: 12.2% of pieces were attributed toagitating, 42% to touching and 45.8% to joyful categories forthe tonal repertoire; 39% of pieces were attributed to agitating,43.1% to touching and 17.89% to joyful categories for the atonalrepertoire.

As can be clearly appreciated, although the evaluation of piecesas “touching” was not affected by the tonal/atonal dimension (42vs. 43.1%), scores were asymmetrically distributed to the otheremotional categories for the two repertoires. Atonal pieces werejudged, overall, to be significantly (z = 2.37, p < 0.018) moredistressing (agitating) than tonal pieces, as shown by a paired-samples Wilcoxon rank sum test applied to the percentage ofevaluations attributed to the agitating vs. joyful classes. For tonalpieces the pattern looked the opposite (please see Figure 3) butthe difference did not reach statistical significance (z = 1.48,p = 0.13).

Exclusion/Inclusion CriteriaThe most coherently evaluated pieces were examined for theirsimilarities in structure, rhythm, and ensemble instrumentation

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FIGURE 5 | Individual values of heart frequency recorded in healthy university students while listening to tonal or atonal musical pieces. The lattercondition was associated with a pronounced bradycardia (represented by a more extended green and yellow area). AGIT-AT = atonal agitating; JOY-AT = atonaljoyful; SAD-AT = atonal touching; AGIT-T = tonal agitating; JOY-T = tonal joyful; SAD-T = tonal touching.

across the two classes of tonal and atonal repertoires. Table 1reports the pieces that received the largest number of coherentevaluations. The selected pieces are highlighted in bold. Basedon the constraints imposed by the experimental paradigm, asingle piece was selected for each stylistic and emotional categoryaccording to a set of criteria that guaranteed intracategorichomogeneity. These were:

(a) Absence of the human voice. On the basis of this principle,“Eia Popeia” by Alban Berg (from the atonal-touching category)was discarded. “Erwartung” by Arnold Schönberg (from theatonal-agitating category) was also discarded.

(b) Composition and size of the instrumental ensemble. Onthe basis of this principle, piano solo pieces were discarded(Brahms’s intermezzo for piano, Ravel’s concert in Gmajor) fromthe tonal-sad category.

(c) Tempo and rhythmic structure. On the basis of thisprinciple, Bach’s (and not Mahler’s) and Parvo’s (and not Ives’s)touching pieces were selected as more comparable to each other.Please see here the technical ratio1.

1The Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten is characterized by the descendantnature of the main melody (in A minor), structured in compound time (sixquarters), and which continuously repeats extending over the course of itssubsequent reinstatements. This obsessively declining directionality, so markedand persistent from the beginning to the end of the piece, calls to mind thecombination of beauty and transience to which it clearly refers. A partial analogywith Largo from the second movement of Bach’s double concerto is precisely dueto the same downward direction of the main melody, also in compound time

(d) Stylistic distinctiveness. According to this criterion, “ThePlanets: Mars, the Bringer of War in C minor” was discarded inthat it is not completely tonal in nature. This piece seems to havean undefined tonal structure. It ends with the C chord using onlythe root and the fifth, and without the third. Therefore, the chordcould be interpreted to be either C-major or C-minor. Holstuses only triads, which follow none of the traditional harmonic

(12 eighths) although it takes place on a F major rather than A minor scale.The structural similarity between Part and Bach is suggested by the imitativestyle of both compositions: Bach melody takes place through some sort of“airy,” relaxed and lyrical dialog between the two concertante solo violins thatalternate and overlap by counterpointing between each other. Similarly, in Part,lines overlap by organizing themselves two by two, forming however a complexheterophonic texture of the whole, given that his writing brings already into playthe “tintinnabuli” style based on the resonance of the bell. Conversely, a piece likeThe Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, though beginning with a suspended andrarefied sonority due to the sustained notes of the strings (which is apparentlyreminiscent of some of Pärt’s atmospheres) is actually designed in a radicallydifferent way. Ives, in fact, works with a heterogeneous and layered material dueto the brass atonal inserts that contrast ex abrupto with the “timeless” strings’immobility, while Part’s heterophonic accumulation tends to greater fusion ratherthan to a contraposition as with the American composer. Part’s references to thecanonical Flemish tradition thus motivate the pairing of his Cantus with Bach,rather than Ives or Mahler’s Fifth Symphony Adagietto. The Adagietto, in F major,limited to the use of strings with harp, is actually a Lied or a romance written forAlma Schindler. This piece is traditionally structured in ternary form and reachesits peak just before the closing, from which the rondò-finale immediately follows.Just its character of romanza (song), mainly supported by the wide melody of thefirst violins, keeps away Mahler’s writing of adagietto from the strictly canonicalsetting of Part’s Cantus in Memoriam.

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FIGURE 6 | Mean values of diastolic blood pressure (diaBDP), alongwith standard errors, recorded while participants listened to atonal vs.tonal music pieces.

progressions according to the diatonic scale degree. Db-majorappears to be the tonal center together with the basso ostinatoon the note G. Both the Db-major and the basso ostinato onthe note G appear to promote the idea of bitonality (Leelasiri,2001).

Stimuli and MaterialFor each of the selected pieces, taken from commercially availableCDs, 1 min of connotative track was obtained by cutting thesoundtrack via mp3 DirectCut and Format Factory software.Audio clips were faded at the end (in the last second) viaAudacitysoftware. Sound tracks were accurately matched for intensity withMP3Gain software (89.0 dB).

The six selected pieces were evaluated for their familiarity by agroup of 10 university students (mean age = 22.7 years) from thesame cohort of experimental subjects (i.e., non-musicians withno musical training) using a three-point scale (0 = no familiarity;1 = somewhat familiar; 2 = familiar). Instructions informedsubjects not to rate the piece by its typology (e.g., classical music,contemporary music, Baroque music) but specifically to rate thepiece’s familiarity. In pieces that had some familiarity, subjectswere asked to describe the exact circumstances in which theyoriginally heard the piece (e.g., at the mall, at the airport, on TV,during a party, a concert, listening to a CD, MP3, etc.). The scoreswere submitted to ANOVA whose factors were style (tonal vs.

FIGURE 7 | Mean values of systolic blood pressure (sysBDP), alongwith standard errors, recorded while participants listened to atonal vs.tonal music pieces.

atonal) and emotional tone (sad, happy, agitating). The musicalpieces turned out to be very unfamiliar with no differences acrossclasses (mean score = 0.3).

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY

SubjectsFifty healthy participants (25 males and 25 females), ranging inage between 18 and 28 years (mean age = 22.2 years), took partto the study. They were all right-handed with normal hearing andvision and none had suffered from previous or current psychiatricor neurological diseases. Participants were recruited throughSona System (a system for recruiting students who earn creditfor their psychology courses by participating in research studies),received academic credits for their participation and providedwritten informed consent. The experiment was performed inaccordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations and wasapproved by the Ethical Committee of the University of Milano-Bicocca. The participants were blinded to the purpose of theexperiment. None of the participants was a musician, and none ofthem had ever studiedmusic, played amusical instrument, or hada musical activity as a hobby or specific interest. This informationwas specifically ascertained through the administration of adetailed questionnaire.

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TABLE 2 | Musicological characterization of atonal pieces used in the psychophysiological study. Aside from their being associated with a specific emotionalstate (i.e., joy, agitation and pathos, respectively) they shared some properties (described below), such as their ability to induce anxiety and psychological tension inlisteners, along with their atonality.

Hindemith, PaulFirst Movement of I Kammermusik (Joyful)

Kammermusik (1922) reflects Hindemith’s conception, typical of the 1920s, about the idea of composing functional music (Gebrauchsmusik) based on the invention ofsimple figurations and on repetitive-type motor rhythmics. There is the reference to Bach’s counterpointistic writing, although mediated by the use of modern materials.The orchestral ensemble envisaged – flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet in Bb, percussion, piano, accordion, and string quintet – in fact refers to jazz- and cabaret-likesonorities typical of that period.In the score, Hindemith characterizes the 1st movement with the following wording: Sehrschnell und wild, translatable as “very fast and wild” to refer to the agitated,repetitive and rhythmic nature of the musical writing used. The melodic-harmonic material is based on the stratification of diatonic-modal, defective scalar formulas, onbichords of perfect fifths and, in certain points, on the overlapping of different triads; overall, these elements give the reiterated, incisive and well-marked writing ofrhythmic-melodic structures a generally euphonic sonority.The polarized use of heights – fixed, depending on the sections, on certain areas of the frequency space – generates an apparent and ambiguous stability as it isconstantly thwarted and destabilized by the play of displacements, contrasts, and rhythmic deformations.The opening passage (corresponding to the selected 1-min fragment) is punctuated by rapid and vigorously swirling repeated quatrains of sixteenths by two violins andviola, combined with the sextuplets of piano, all in fortissimo; simultaneously, flute, clarinet, accordion, and cello (on a high-pitched sound range) perform in unison theshort main motive, always repeated in fortissimo, and rhythmically interspersed at certain points by the trumpet. A second part of the composition is timbrallycharacterized by the punchy sound of the xylophone.As a whole, this first movement is articulated by means of short rhythmic-melodic formulas that are precise and clear, and which alternate without continuity betweenthem, with resumptions subjected to deformations, generating asymmetry effects. In certain moments, the writing takes on a vehemently percussive character, thusfurther emphasizing the incisive and energetic nature of the piece. All this gives to the listener the feeling of cinematic music in which the motor rhythmicitypredominates over all other musical elements.

Donatoni, FrancoDuo Pour Bruno (Agitating)Duo for Bruno is an orchestral piece composed by Franco Donatoni approximately in 1974–1975. It is a tribute to Bruno Maderna, who had passed away on November13, 1973. The starting material, in fact, is derived from a popular Venetian song “The blonde in gondoletta,” widely used by Maderna in his 1972 “Venetian Journal” fortenor, magnetic tape and orchestra. This diatonic material, however, is distributed by Donatoni between instruments without ever being quoted verbatim, except in theearly parts of the work with the very dilated values of the oboes. The orchestra used by Donatoni does not include bassoons and tuba, and lower strings are reduced,thus resulting in a timbric lightening of the overall sonority. The title alludes to the duo’s instrumentation and to the formal structure of the work. There are twopercussionists arranged symmetrically, two solo violins, celesta and vibraphone, two pianos, two harps and woodwinds and brass are treated in copies; eachinstrumental family is also divided into low- and high-pitched sounds. From a formal point of view, Duo for Bruno is divisible into 10 “panels,” often seemingly unrelatedto each other and processed by various manipulations of varying complexity regarding their underlying structures. Each “panel” is conceived to be a diptych divided into13 bars, a central bar acting as a hinge and 13 other bars, and it is characterized by its instrumental combinations, the plot of its internal representations, and itsrhythmic articulations. Overall, in the succession of the 10 “panels,” a dynamic growing is felt, culminating in the finale, with a persistent, repetitive and “ostinato” TUTTI,punctuated by the powerful shots of the two bass drums alternately.At the same time, in each panel, the central bar, acting as a hinge between the two main parts, takes on a more and more disturbing valence. In it, in fact, the two soloviolins and tubular bells intervene constantly. Starting from the second “panel,” the two violins overflow in bars around the central bar. This process, creating agitationand internal instability, increases more and more on the succession of “panels” to completely dissolve the hinge function at the end of the piece.The 1-min fragment played in the psychophysiological experiment coincides with part of the ninth “panel” characterized by its dissonant and violent colors, for thepowerful tones of the four trombones, and for the immediate dynamic contrasts and sudden overturning. In the hinge bar, we hear seven notes of the bells and theisolated violin sounds. The descending chromatic melodic contours evoke the idea of pain or lamentation in the listener, and shifts toward the lower registers formimesis suggest feelings of distress or suffering and transience. A state of intense and irrepressible excitement predominates, in which the hinge bar is followed bychord blocks in trill and tremolo by strings, alternated with polyphony of winds. These features can therefore generate a feeling of intense agitation and distress, withfurious moments alternated with plaintive states. It must be remembered, however, that for Donatoni, Duo for Bruno represented a work mainly marked by a strongcreative vitality and energy.

Pärt, ArvoCantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten (Touching)

The composition of the Cantus dates back to 1977 and it is a type of funeral elegy that Arvo Pärt dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Britten, who passed away ayear before, as suggested by the title itself. In this composition, the presence of that style that Part himself would later called “tintinnabuli” is recognizable, with referenceto the resonances of the bells. It is a compositional style characterized by an extreme simplification of the harmony and the musical material used. As explained by thecomposer himself, if you strike a bell several times, a peculiar harmony will follow, oscillating around a low-pitched frequency. The “tintinnabuli” technique preciselyreproduces these fluctuations, translating them into sequences and superimpositions of melodic lines, creating layers of harmonics. For example, the three notes of atriad can be interpreted, according to Pärt, as the sounds of a bell.Another feature is the use of the presence of two voices, one of which serves as an accompaniment by repeating the notes of the tonal chord, whereas the other carriesthe main melody. This is what happens in the Cantus, where the strings (except for violas) are divided mainly into two groups, except for violas. The fragment used inthe study was taken by the initial piece of the work (after the first 15 s). The Cantus’s incipit is characterized by isolated bell sounds that remain constant after the entryof strings, regularly performing groups of three shots in a gradual crescendo toward fff to progressively decrease until the last stroke in pp, which ends the piece.Stringed instruments enter one after the other, from the first violins up to double bass, each on a same melody based on a minor natural descendent scale but inaugmentation of a 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 ratio; this means that, for example, the double basses play the main melody augmented sixteen times compared to the figurations ofthe first violin. It is a canonical proportional technique, as was in vogue for the Flemish and Renaissance polyphonists.The first violins in the first part begin on sharp A5 and then repeatedly drop according to a rhythm in six quarters, adding a note to the lowest pitch of the scale; on theother hand, the first violins in the second part move along the notes of A minor arpeggio. The same is repeated with values dilated in other instruments, thus creating aharmonic-melodic texture on the notes of the eolic diatonic scale, like a sort of downward spiral projected simultaneously on several levels. In conjunction with thegrowing of the strokes of the bell, the arches gradually culminate over a fff, which remains constant until the conclusion. All of this is completed by gravitating on a longconclusive chord in A minor at full volume, suddenly leaving room for the slight distant resonance, at the edge of silence, of the last very delicate bell tolling.

(Continued)

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TABLE 2 | Continued

The Cantus, therefore, is essentially a moving meditation on death, symbolized by the initial silence from which the toll of the funeral bell intermittently emerge (alludingto the passing of Britten), by repeated descending movements toward a deep register, which pervade the entire work in their essential simplicity. This is also symbolizedby the sound atmosphere of the minor mode and by the final silence with which the piece ends at its climax. In Arvo Pärt, all of this takes on a spiritual meaning relatedto his intimate religious faith.

ProcedureSubjects were comfortably seated in an anechoic chamber indimly lit conditions. They wore headphones and a wrist device(on the left hand) for measuring heartbeat, and blood pressure(Diastolic = DiaBDLP and systolic = SysBDP) whose propertieswere: INNOFIT(INN-001) model, MWI technology (Precision:BLP ± 3 mmHg, heart rate ± 5%; range: 0–299 mmHg,40/180 bpm). Participants faced a PC screen (through a mirror)located outside the cubicle, where they observed 300 faces tobe remembered in a subsequent recall study. This kept theiralertness levels even across the study. Faces were balanced foraffective valence and perceived arousal across auditory blocks.The auditory stimulus was delivered through MP3 players. Eachmusical fragment was heard three times by each participant atdifferent stages of the recording session. To limit the length ofthe experiment, half of the subjects were randomly assigned tothe tonal or atonal conditions. The order of stimulus presentationvaried randomly across subjects.

Data AnalysisThe individual values of average heart rate and blood pressure(both diastolic and systolic) recorded during the various musicconditions underwent three ANOVAs with two factors ofvariability: music style (atonal vs. tonal), and emotion (agitating,joyful, touching). Tukey’s post hoc test was used for comparisonsacross means.

RESULTS

The ANOVA performed on heart rate values yielded thesignificance of music style [F(1,24) = 380; p < 0.000001],and heart frequency was lower while listening to atonal (71.3,SD = 2.18 bpm) over tonal music (77.4, SD = 2.18 bpm), asvisible in Figure 4. Figure 5 displays the individual values of heartfrequency recorded in healthy university students while listeningto tonal or atonal musical pieces. No effect of emotion wasvisible except for a tendency of touching music to increase heartrate, particularly atonal music, as indicated by the significantEmotion × Style interaction [F(2,48) = 6.39; p < 0.0035], andrelative post hoc comparisons.

The ANOVA performed on diastolic blood pressure valuesyielded the significance of stimulus type [F(1,24) = 198;p < 0.000001], and sysBLP was higher overall while listening toall atonal vs. tonal pieces (see Figure 6). There was no significanteffect of emotion.

The ANOVA performed on systolic blood pressure valuesyielded the significance of music style [F(1,24) = 27.11;p < 0.000025], and sysBLP was higher overall

while listening to all atonal rather than tonal pieces(see Figure 7). There was no significant effect ofemotion.

DISCUSSION

Listening to instrumental atonal music (independent of thepiece’s emotional characteristics) was associated with reducedheart rate (bradycardia) and increased blood pressure (bothdiastolic and systolic) compared to the tonal condition.Bradycardic changes of heartrate are associated with interestand attending to a stimulus (Coles and Duncan-Johnson,1977; Hernández and Watson, 1997). Furthermore, bradycardicchanges and increased blood pressure are associated withanxiety, tension and lack of relaxation. It is therefore possiblethat listening to atonal music might induce a parasympatheticresponse whose peripheral effects are sensed by the listenerto be psychological tension and agitation. Indeed, accordingthe esthetic assessment made by professional conductors andcomposers, the atonal repertoire is by definition more agitating.This interpretation fits very well with the findings commonlyreported of a deceleration of the cardiac activity duringperception of scary, threatening or noxious sounds. Thisdefensive response is called fear-induced bradycardia, and isobservable also in newborns (Anderssen et al., 1993). However,the psychophysiological literature is conflicting on this matter(i.e., the effects of agitating music on autonomic responses).For example, Hilz et al. (2014) monitored systolic and diastolicblood pressure while participants either sat in silence or listenedto “relaxing” vs. “aggressive” excerpts of classical music. Theresults showed that listening to relaxing classical music andlistening to aggressive classical music both increased systolicblood pressure, whereas the autonomic activation was lowerunder conditions of silence; therefore, aggressive music didnot specifically increase blood pressure. The musical pieceswere all tonal in this study, which might explain the lackof fear bradycardia. Our hypothesis is that the autonomicmodulation found here is specifically related to the fearfulaspects of atonal music, which was lacking in the musicstimulation usually provided in previous psychophysiologicalstudies.

Overall, by integrating psycho-esthetic withpsychophysiological data from the present study, it can behypothesized that the atonal music perception increasedarousal and alertness to a greater extent than tonal music tothe ears of non-musicians, as influenced by their auditorycomplexity and threatening properties. These notions arewell-known to composers of thriller and horror movie

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soundtracks who make large use of dissonance and otherexpedients to scare audiences and create a sense of unease ordread (e.g., unresolved dissonances, timbral experimentation,unexpected recontextualization of a consonant and familiar-sounding musical work, atonality, stinger chords, repetitiousdrones, sudden changes in intensity, unpredictability, clashingdissonances; Lerner, 2009; Heimerdinger, 2012). These auditorystimuli have threatening and alerting properties, andmay activatethe amygdala, increase blood pressure, trigger an autonomic fear-related response, increase attention and excitability, and providea psychological sense of anxiety (Davis and Whalen, 2001).Table 2 shows a musicological description of our atonal stimuli,suggesting their ability to create an intensely emotional, moving,threatening or wondrous feeling in the listener (regardless of theirspecific emotional label).

The present findings show that the various music-inducedemotions have a small modulatory effect on the vegetativeresponse of ANS, in agreement with other psychophysiologicalstudies providing negative (e.g., Etzel et al., 2006; Radstaak et al.,2014; Krabs et al., 2015), or inconsistent results (Iwanaga et al.,2005; Bernardi et al., 2006; Sammler et al., 2007; Tan et al., 2015).This pattern of autonomic responses suggests a fundamentaldifference with the cerebral responses to music, known to beclearly affected by the piece’s emotional connotation (Sammleret al., 2007; Salimpoor et al., 2011; Trost et al., 2012; Stupacheret al., 2013).

However, other data from our lab (Proverbio et al., 2015)with a larger group indicate that listening to touching musicalpieces slightly but significantly increases heart rate (regardlessor tonality) compared to environmental sounds (e.g., rain andthunder), suggesting that music is able to induce affective feelingsregardless of compositional style. Other investigations are neededto determine the neural correlate of brain activation duringmusic listening, which will likely highlight major differences as

a function of music’s affective connotation (joyful vs. agitating vs.touching).

One of the limits of the study is the possibility of a culturallymediated difference in the esthetic preference for a tonal oratonal repertoire between the judges (who characterized thepieces as joyful, touching, and agitating) and naïve participantswho listened to the selected pieces. Indeed, esthetic interviewswere distributed to professional conductors and composers, whomight have developed a positive esthetic taste for atonal musicas a result of their specific profession. These judges concludedthat the tonal and atonal repertoire was equally full of pathosand overall touching. On the other hand, we missed the estheticevaluation of pieces from university students, who showed astrong difference in their autonomic responses to the tonaland the atonal pieces, possibly reflecting increased alertnessand attention levels, a sense of wonder (feeling allured andamazed), psychological tension, and possibly anxiety and fearof the latter. The other possible limit relies in the concurrentvisual stimulation. Indeed participants watched a sequence of 300faces (balanced for affective valence and perceived arousal acrossauditory blocks) as a secondary task. Therefore they did notspecifically pay attention to the auditory stimulation. If, on onehand, one might fear a cross modal interaction between auditoryand visual processing (Marin et al., 2012), on the other hand,the inattentive auditory condition makes even more relevant thestrong modulation of autonomic responses (fear bradycardia)which was found during listening to atonal music.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are deeply indebted to our 20 anonymous judges whoso generously contributed to this investigation and to allparticipants for their kind support.

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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research wasconducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that couldbe construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2015 Proverbio, Manfrin, Arcari, De Benedetto, Gazzola,Guardamagna, Lozano Nasi and Zani. This is an open-access article distributedunder the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use,distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the originalauthor(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journalis cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution orreproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 13 October 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 1646